I Knew You Were Trouble
by you bet giraffe
Summary: He's so bad but does it so well. She can see the end as it begins: Marlene already knows where this crazy love is going because loving him is like going from zero to a hundred miles per hour down a dead-end street. Taylor Swift song.
1. Chapter 1

**I Knew You Were Trouble**

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4/11 2015. Word Count: 125

i.

"Don't look now, but Sirius Black is staring at you."

Marlene rolled her eyes and took a sip of her pumpkin juice. "Lovely. Make him stop, Lily."

Her best friend laughed in response. "What? Why would I do that?" She waved cheerfully in Sirius's direction.

"Don't encourage him!" Marlene hissed. She frantically reached across the Gryffindor table and tried to stop Lily's arms from their enthusiastic waving.

"He's coming over," Lily sang as she dodged Marlene's grasp.

Right on cue, Sirius sauntered towards them with his shirt predictably not tucked in and hair untidy. "G'morning, ladies," he winked.

"And I'm leaving." Marlene glared at Lily and mouthed _I hate you_. She grabbed her book bag and left her breakfast half-eaten in her haste to escape.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: _Sixteen Candles _reference coming up.**

4/11 2015. Word Count: 394

ii.

Transfiguration with McGonagall was such a bore. Marlene periodically let out her breath in loud gusty sighs as she counted the sand grains in the hourglass that marked the passage of time. As McGonagall droned on and on about the properties of physics, Marlene directed her attention out the window towards the sunny day outside. It was perfect flying weather which made being stuck indoors all the more harder to bear.

Something hit her head and jerked her out of her daydreaming. Sparing a glance at the front of the room, Marlene saw that McGonagall was still preoccupied with explaining the concept of energy and its relation to magic. Lily and James were, of course, soaking up as much information as they could, but here in the back of classroom where Marlene sat, all the other Sixth Years were nodding off or finding other ways to entertain themselves. Take Sirius Black, for example: he was head-banging away and playing the air drums on his desk top. She barely suppressed an eye roll at his juvenile antics, and she reached down to pick up the paper aeroplane that had bounced off her head and onto the floor a few minutes ago. On it was one of the silly mindless questionnaire games Dorcas liked to play.

_Have you ever touched it?_ the first question asked.

Marlene flashbacked to a midnight walk around the Black Lake with Robert Davies last year. _Almost_.

_Have you ever done it?_

She chewed on the end of her quill. _I don't think so._

_If you answered "I don't think so" would you ever if you could?_

That earned an eye roll. _I guess._

_With whom? (Be honest. Your name is not on this so it's okay.)_

Marlene froze. A familiar face popped into her mind: dark hair, wild eyes, tall, and handsome as hell. Against her better judgment, she put a name with that face and wrote it down. _Sirius Black_. Her quill hesitated over the c in his last name but she quickly penned it and moved on to the next question.

_Does he know that you want to with him?_

She stared at the question with wide eyes. _NO!_

Then, without further ado, she threw the note back in Dorcas's direction and put thoughts of a troublemaker she's had a crush on since Second Year out of her mind.


	3. Chapter 3

4/11 2015. Word Count: 162

iii.

"Dorcas! What do you mean you don't have the note?"

Dorcas sidestepped a snogging couple on the staircase, and the two Gryffindor girls continued their ascent up to Gryffindor Tower from the Transfiguration classroom. "Like I said, Mar, I never received the note back from you."

"Shit, shit, double dragon shit," Marlene cursed.

"Incorrect password," said the Fat Lady with a disapproving glare.

"Piss off," Marlene scowled. She stopped at the portrait hole and rifled through her book bag frantically. "Are you sure you don't have it?"

"I'm sorry, Mar. Someone else must have picked it up or something."

"No, no, no," she moaned and searched through her bag even faster. "Merlin, please no."

Dorcas pulled the end of her ponytail into her mouth. "What? Who did you write down that would be so embarrassing if someone else found out you fancy him?"

Marlene cringed. "Swear you won't tell?"

She nodded.

Marlene bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut. "Sirius Black."


	4. Chapter 4

4/11 2015. Word Count:

iv.

It was not very busy in the Common Room that night. The fire burned merrily in the hearth and the crackling flames was a comforting sound as Marlene flipped pages in her journal. Mum had found a box of Marlene's things from her younger years and had posted it to her earlier in the week.

Nostalgia wrapped around Marlene like a childhood blanket as she fingered the tear-stained pages of her first few homesick days at Hogwarts and then laughed at the pranks she recalled the Marauders playing on her and the other girls over the years. Moving pictures and handwritten notes were glued into a scrapbook, as well. Her hands smoothed over the yellowed items as she fondly remembered her firefly catching days.

Everyone was so little! Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin were nearly identical twins, what with their gap-toothed smiles, freckled faces, and sandy brown hair. James could be counted on tugging little Lily's pigtails in almost every single picture. Younger Marlene, surprisingly, was often up to no good with Sirius.

She'd known him for most of her life. As Purebloods, their families often travelled in the same social circles. The McKinnon family was predominantly Ravenclaw while the Black family was notoriously Slytherin – Marlene and Sirius were the black sheep of their families and were often thrown together as an afterthought at the high society social functions.

Marlene sat back on the scarlet couch and stared into the fire as the memories played back in her mind. She remembered hiding with Sirius in the Library during their First Year – a place neither would have ever dared to step foot in otherwise if they weren't trying to escape their families' Howlers once they had heard wind of where their prodigal children had been Sorted. She and him shared Hogwarts Express train compartments and were Quidditch training partners. Pranks were schemed and executed, birthdays were celebrated, secrets and dreams were shared, and all through it Sirius and Marlene were together. They weren't best friends, exactly, but they knew each other.

But then, something happened between the summer of Fourth and Fifth Year. Marlene shivered as the echo of rejection and loneliness sweeps over her again. She remembered waiting all day for Sirius to sit by her on the train and then again in the Great Hall during the Sorting ceremony, only to realise that he was never going to come by. She saw him transform into a stranger as all traces of her friend vanished. Gone was the sticky sweet little boy with the messy hair who would catch frogs and run wild just because he wanted to stand on the edge of the world with her. In his place was a boy-almost-man with cold, tired eyes and an aloof smirk. He took what he wanted from the world, whether it was girls, money, or power, and callously discarded the rest.

That was the summer Sirius Black became trouble.


	5. Chapter 5

4/12 2015. Word Count: 250

v.

"Gross, Marlene!" Lily squealed and collapsed in a fit of giggles on the Girls' Dormitory floor. "You can't make me choose between the three of them!"

"That's what foursomes are for, honey." Emmeline winked as she took a swig from the bottle of firewhiskey they had smuggled up into the dorms. They were celebrating Dorcas's birthday and were playing all of the sleepover games from their younger years in her honour.

"Do _you_ want to get into a foursome with Professor Slughorn, Filch, and Hagrid?" Dorcas shot back.

Alice shuddered violently. "Hell to the no," she said. "Let's call a pass on that one. Em – your turn to ask."

The dirty blonde nodded and let out a burp. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and then pointed to Marlene. "All right. Marly – truth or dare."

"Wrong game, Em!" the Gryffindors laughed.

"What? Oh, right. Er, shag, marry, kill Peter, James, or... dammit, there are four of 'em, right? How am I supposed to pick between the last two?"

"Do Sirius," Lily supplied ever-so-helpfully.

"Yeah, him," Emmeline agreed.

Marlene grabbed the bottle of firewhiskey and downed nearly half of it to stall for time. "Shag James – sorry, Lils – marry Peter, and kill Sirius," she answered quickly. Marlene buried her face back into the bottle of amber liquid, and thus didn't see the other girls' looks of disappointment that she didn't take the opportunity they gave her to confess who she actually fancied even though they already knew.


	6. Chapter 6

4/12 2015. Word Count: 445

vi.

"Move!" she screamed at two First Years. "Out of my way!" She shoved them to the side of the staircase and took the stairs two at a time. "Merlin's bollocks, I'm late. I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!" She sprinted across corridors and down flights of stairs, her robes flying out behind her.

Professor Sprout wasn't a stickler for rules, but tardiness was unacceptable in her class. Marlene cursed herself for forgetting to set her alarm the night before. She had no idea how behind schedule she actually was, but it didn't matter. Late was late, and she was most assuredly late.

" – can find knotgrass near lakes – oh, Ms McKinnnon. So nice of you to join us this bright, sunny morning. And, I'm sure I'll be seeing you after dinner as we go weed around the Black Lake for your detention tonight?" Professor Sprout greeted her.

"I, er, yes," Marlene stuttered out. She hated the lake at night. "Right."

"Very well. And, oh, it seems that Mr Black is partnerless with Mr Lupin's extended absence. Why don't you go work with him for the week?"

"Right," Marlene muttered under her breath. "Just my luck." Marlene deposited her belongings in the cubbies at the front of the greenhouse and then went to her partner's station. "So," she said when it appeared he had no intention of acknowledging her presence. "What are we doing?"

Sirius turned his smokey grey eyes in her direction. "You," he began. "Are checking the beds of knotgrass on the lakesides for newts. And when you find one, then you call me over and I'll catch it for you. I know how much you despise getting your hands dirty, darlin'."

Marlene arched an eyebrow. "How about _you_ check the beds and _I_ catch the amphibians? If you recall, I was always the better one at catching slimy gits than you."

"Must have slipped my mind," Sirius shrugged. He let out a low whistle. "Snob-ert Davies in Fifth Year. Can't get much slimier than him."

Marlene scoffed. "_Rob_ert is nice and kind and a thousand times more of a man than you will ever be, Black."

"Yeah, well, too bad Daddy can't buy the little prick some manners in addition to his spot on the Ravenclaw team."

Marlene could feel her blood pressure rising. She knew he was goading her – temper tantrums were his forte – but she was determined to be the mature one out of the two of them. She grabbed a bucket and a shovel and stalked out of the greenhouse, effectively removing herself from the toxic environment.

But she couldn't stop herself from flipping him off on her way out.


	7. Chapter 7

4/19 2015. Word Count: 556

vii.

Her blood has cooled some since her encounter with Sirius in Herbology but her nerves are still on edge. Adrenaline flickered through her veins; she's sure that the slightest thing will set her off. To regain some of her sanity and rationality, Marlene mentally scheduled in a period of relaxation for her. She's envisioning a nice, chilled glass of pumpkin juice and maybe a few laps around the Quidditch pitch in the time between dinner and her scheduled detention with Professor Sprout. So caught up in her thoughts, she doesn't realise the scene in the corridor she's walked into until she heard a pitiful squeak of help.

Her eyes darted between the three Slytherin males and the terrified Hufflepuff boy in their grips. "Parkinson," she greeted the Slytherin with a sort-of squashed in face. He was the least abhorrent of the three in front of her: Malfoy and Dolohov weren't exactly known for their pleasant demeanour.

"McKinnon," Andrew Parkinson nodded his head in acknowledgment. He turned his attention back to the Hufflepuff in an obvious display of dismissal.

Marlene's not deterred, though. "Just what do you think you're doing?" she asked the three Slytherins sharply. Another close look at the Hufflepuff confirmed that the meeting between the four was less than polite: the poor bloke – First Year, by the looks of it – has red splotches all over his skin, a trademark sign of Stinging Hexes. His nose was wet with snot and blood and bruising is beginning to form over one eye.

"What's it to you?" Dolohov sneered at the same time that Malfoy drawled, "Get out of here, blood traitor."

"Sure, whatever," she agreed amiably. "The Hufflepuff goes with me." Marlene stepped forward in the few seconds it took for them to process her words, but before she could snag the First Year out of their clutches, three sets of wands were trained on her.

"Not so fast," Parkinson hissed out. "We still have some magical teaching to give to this Mudblood." Sparks shot out of his wand threateningly, making it quite obvious what sort of 'teaching' he was talking about.

"Right," Marlene said slowly. "I'm sure you do. But I'm also positive that Professor Slughorn could also give him the sort of teaching he _should_ be learning from, so I'm just gonna help him find his way to class –"

Dolohov interrupted her with an outraged cry of "_Stupefy!_" which she just barely dodged. After the first spell was thrown, all bets were off. The thin calm she had put in place to mask her vehement disgust with the Slytherins for their blood prejudice was tossed aside. Absolutely furious, she gave as good as she got, if not better.

Three against one (plus the Hufflepuff who was useless at this point) weren't great odds, and Marlene realised early on that she needed to get her and the First Year out of the corridor and away from the Slytherins as soon as possible. Jets of light flashed and ricocheted in the narrow, enclosed space, making it impossible to trace whose spell or hex was whose.

With some strategising foresight and a decent amount of luck, Marlene found herself facing one end of the corridor with the Slytherins on the other. She grabbed the Hufflepuff's hand, cast a Shield Charm, hoped for the best, and fled down the corridor.


End file.
